material body. Considered apart from their union, then, there are two persons; and if you were to obliterate the personality of the human nature you would mutilate that nature, and it would be no longer complete. Instead, therefore, of saying that two natures were united, we may say that two persons were united; and, as it is heresy to say that the two natures were fused together, so as to make a third nature different from either, we must suppose that these two persons remain in indestructible entirety, as is indeed expressly declared by the definition of Chalcedon, 'the same perfect in deity, the same perfect in humanity."1 Accordingly the dogma declares that Christ had two wills, the human and the Divine; or, in other words, that he was two persons, for will is a characteristic mark of personality. But this is heresy; and we shall forfeit our salvation if we say that he was more than one person. If, in order to escape this difficulty, you say that the personality resided in the Divine nature, you destroy the human nature; for an apparent man without personality is not a man at all. The dogma, therefore, appears to be one of which you may believe the several parts at different times, but which it is impossible to believe all at once; for in asserting one part you are denying another. It follows that for me (I speak not for others) to affirm my belief that the two complete and distinct natures were united in one person would not be to accept a sublime mystery, but to make an assertion which is absolutely destitute of meaning, being tantamount to saying that Christ was at one and the same time two persons and only one person. Such are the subtleties on which Christian theologians, in utter disregard of the teachings of their Master, have made salvation to depend.

We may refer here to a curious doctrine put forward in modern times by some theologians who contrive to maintain a reputation for orthodoxy. I allude to the doctrine of 1 Τέλειον τὸν αὐτὸν ἐν θεότητι, τέλειον τὸν αὐτὸν ἐν ἀνθρωπότητι.

Kenosis (emptying).1 The signs of human limitation in the Christ of the Gospels are too obvious to be denied, and it is admitted that there were certain things, such as the time of the second advent and the authorship of some of the books of the Old Testament, which he did not know, and that he accepted one or more popular errors. This limitation seems inconsistent with his Deity; and in order to explain it the doctrine of Kenosis has been invented. This word is derived from Philippians ii. 7, where we read that Christ emptied himself,' and this is explained as meaning that he voluntarily laid aside his omniscience when he became incarnate. One German theologian, indeed, Gess, goes so far as to maintain that, when the Logos became incarnate, his actual Deity was reduced to a mere potentiality, and, having even laid aside his self-consciousness, he was, during his residence on earth, not only without the relative attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, but even without his eternal and essential holiness, truth, and love.3 Other advocates of Kenosis, however, do not go so far. Dr. Sanday applies it to the records of demoniacal possession. 'There can be no doubt,' he says, that Jesus himself shared, broadly speaking, the views of His contemporaries in regard to these cases'; and he explains this by adding, 'There was a certain circle of ideas which Jesus accepted in becoming man in the same way in which he accepted a particular language with its grammar and vocabulary.'4 Before proceeding further we may notice how incorrect is the analogy which is here introduced. The adoption of an innocent practice, such as the use of a language different from your

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1 Some account of this is given by Dr. Green in the Essay already mentioned. He frankly admits the limitations of Christ's power and knowledge, while professing to retain the dogma of the two natures in one person.

2 Ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε.

3 See Nitzsch, Dogmatik, p. 481.

4 Hastings' Dict. of the Bible, Art. 'Jesus Christ,' p. 624. Does Dr. Sanday really mean that the Logos bore the name of Jesus before the incarnation?

own, is an acquisition instead of a self-emptying, and bears no resemblance to the acceptance of, and honest belief in, an idea which you know to be false. The one lies within the range of voluntary choice; the other would be, at least to a man, simply impossible. This doctrine, however, which has been invented in order to save a tottering orthodoxy, is rank heresy; for the Council of Chalcedon, as we have seen, pronounced Christ to be perfect, or complete, in Deity,1 which he certainly was not if the second person of the Trinity made himself imperfect when he became incarnate. At an earlier time Athanasius was quite explicit upon this subject. He says, 'The flesh did not bring ignominy to the Logos, God forbid, but rather the former was glorified by the latter, nor when the Son who was in the form of God assumed the form of a slave did he suffer diminution of his Deity."2 Augustine is equally decisive. He speaks of the Son as ' remaining indeed in his Divinity, and not withdrawing from the Father, nor in anything changed by the assumption of man.' Anselm, at a later time, expressly rejects this idea of Kenosis, and supplies what seems a conclusive argument against it. He says, 'The assumption of man into the unity of the person of God will not be made except wisely by the supreme wisdom, and consequently he will not assume in man what is in no respect useful, but very injurious to the work which the same man is to do. For ignorance would be useful to him for nothing, but injurious for many things: for how, without immeasurable wisdom, shall he do so many and so great works as he is to do? Or how shall men believe. him, if they know that he is ignorant? If, however, they do not know, for what will that ignorance be useful to him?'

1 Τέλειος ἐν θεότητι.

· Οὐ γὰρ ἀδοξίαν ἤνεγκεν ἡ σὰρξ τῷ λόγῳ, μὴ γένοιτο, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον αὕτη δεδόξασται παρ ̓ αὐτοῦ, οὐδὲ ἐπειδὴ δούλου μορφὴν ἀνέλαβεν ὁ ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων υἱός, ἠλαττώθη τῆς θεότητος. Epistola ad Adelphium,4. 3 Manens quidem in divinitate sua, et non recedens a Patre, nec in aliquo mutatus, assumendo tamen hominem.' De catech. rudibus, xxvi. 9.

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The argument proceeds to say that even in infancy he cannot be ignorant; for from the moment when he became man he was always full of God, and hence was never without his power and wisdom.1 Thomas Aquinas more plainly denies. that there was ignorance even in the human nature of Christ; for the fulness of grace excluded ignorance as well as sin.2 This reasoning seems unanswerable; and even if we could admit the possibility of God's relinquishing his own eternal attributes, we cannot suppose that in becoming incarnate he would renounce the very attribute which would be most essential to him as a teacher of truth. It is not only Catholic theology which condemns the doctrine of Kenosis. The Formula of Concord expressly denies that, even according to his human nature, Christ's knowledge was limited, and that he was incapable of having omnipotence and other attributes of the Divine nature.3 We must add that a God who has laid aside his Divine attributes has ceased to be God, so that the doctrine amounts to no more than this, that there was in Christ a special, though imperfect, manifestation of the Divine.

We must pass now to a different and more congenial order of reflection. If there is no authoritative dogmatic revelation, and we find ourselves unable to accept the decisions of the Greek theologians, we must construct our Christology from the facts of Christian experience or of Christian consciousness. Christianity nurtures a peculiar kind of spiritual life, which bears a certain relation to Jesus Christ; and this life or spirit contains implicitly certain truths which it is the business of the Christian theologian to draw forth and express in intellectual form. This is no easy task, and in the interpretation of our deepest consciousness, and

1 Cur Deus homo, lib. II, xiii. 2 Summa theo., Pars III, Qu. xv. Art. iii. 3 Epitome, Art. viii. Negativa §§ 17-20.

4 The line of thought here followed, respecting the person of Christ, has been already given to the public, in different words, in my Essex Hall Lecture, Some Thoughts on Christology,' 1902.

the endeavour to present its contents in the shape of objective truth, the greatest care is necessary; for there is a strong and natural tendency to confuse the experience itself with the intellectual conceptions which have been early implanted in our minds and associated with our religion. Attempts have been made to establish the Deity of Christ on the basis of immediate experience, and to show that Christians have a direct consciousness of the living Christ,' quite apart from the historical records of his earthly sojourn. This argument has been very skilfully presented by the late Dr. Dale,1 but appears to me to be completely fallacious. The reality of the experiences I admit as fully as Dr. Dale, and have endeavoured to prove, in the earlier part of this work, that they point to a Source higher than ourselves. But they have no power whatever to prove the existence of an incarnate God hypostatically united for ever to human nature or to present as an historical reality a figure identical with that of Jesus exhibited in the four Gospels. These ideas are not part of the experience, but only suggestions awakened by association in minds already possessed with them. To take the strongest instance, the fact that prayer to Christ brings peace of heart or strength of will cannot prove that it is Christ personally who answers the prayer; for it may be that God answers all sincere prayer, however imperfect or erroneous may be the form in which it is offered. Can we doubt that the pious heathen received some spiritual gift in response to his prayers? We know that at the present day numbers of men who address their prayers, not to Christ, but to the Father are quite as familiar as the most orthodox believer with the experience described by Dr. Dale. Indeed the fundamental notion of an orthodoxy, that spiritual blessings are confined to those who hold certain dogmatic opinions, is pure delusion; and therefore our consciousness of spiritual blessings cannot prove that the opinions in which we have been nurtured are necessarily correct, although from 1 The Living Christ and the Four Gospels.